


but seas between us broad have roared

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3163163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New Years Eve finds Killian wandering the halls of his friends apartment, searching out the mysterious blonde haired woman he's decided he absolutely has to meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but seas between us broad have roared

He doesn't see her right away, and is immediately annoyed with himself and everyone around him when he finally notices her, two hours to midnight, tucked into a corner and smiling at a couple talking her ear off in front of her, her beer bottle tipped over her lips as she smiles.

He has never seen anything more lovely in his life. His brother, were he here, would remind Killian of his tendencies for hyperbolic overdramatization, but Killian _knows_ the moment he sees her across the space of the apartment that he must meet her. Between the golden locks of hair framing her face, and the ironic tilt to her lips, the way her eyes glint as she takes another sip of her drink, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen and looking for all the world like she wants to be somewhere - anywhere - else; he desperately needs to meet this woman and discover exactly why the tilt of her ire-filled smile is so fascinating to him.

Which of course makes it ten times harder to actually make his way over to her. He spends twenty minutes trying to disentangle himself from one of Will Scarlet's "entrepreneur" friends (he knows a pyramid scheme when he sees one, thank you _very_ much, and he's going to have to have another word with Scarlet about ever, ever mentioning Killian to his more shady acquaintances), and by the time he's ducked away from that horrid experience the couple and their friend have migrated elsewhere - he spends five minutes staring angrily at the cupboard where he'd last caught sight of that spun-gold hair of hers before he begins his search again - only, of course, to be waylaid by Robin making introductions as if Killian has not heard every horribly uncomfortable detail of Regina Mills sexual preferences and wouldn't rather be off in another country than forced to make small talk with the woman.

And then, miracle of miracles, he spots the arm of her white cable-knit sweater as the rest of her swings down a hallway, and excuses himself (he hopes) not too rudely, chasing after her down the hallway.

He catches sight of her veering off into one of the bedrooms and takes a momentary pause, wondering how far past creepy stalker he’ll allow himself to go before he lets this green-eyed siren go.

He follows her.

Of course when he eventually makes his way into the bedroom, she’s not in there, and Killian spends a long few seconds wondering if he’s gone mad and imagined the woman completely - until he feels the draft of a breeze wafting in from the open window that leads out onto the fire escape.

Killian eyes the red cup in his hands carefully before he downs the whole thing - there is plenty to be said for the effects of liquid courage where a beautiful woman is involved.

There are still plenty of Christmas lights turned on along this stretch of Boston neighborhood, and as he pokes his head carefully through the window he has to catch his breath at the sight of the woman he’s been chasing for the past...hour (bloody hell, he is not a healthy human being) - she’s curled carefully against the little bench tucked against the wall, legs bent up underneath her and a bright white hat pulled low over her forehead the only concession to the cold - it has stopped snowing since he got here, and the lights from the neighboring buildings glint and glisten off the snow as he clears his throat to get the woman’s attention.

He tries not to think to hard about the fact that she barely acknowledges his presence, the slight pause before she lifts her beer bottle back up to her lips the only indication she even heard him. She’s bloody gorgeous - long hair curling over her shoulders, rosy-red cheeks and eyes that sparkle against the blinking lights across the street, and he feels the breath leave his lungs as she finally, finally turns to stare at him.

“Killian, right?”

He starts, flummoxed and off center as she turns her body slightly towards him, and she bites back a grin - good god, even a mocking smile from her is enough to leave him speachless. 

“You work with my brother David,” she tells him, and he wracks his brain for David’s for an embarrassingly long time before he realizes she’s talking about Mr. Handsome and Charming (as Killian has taken him to calling, and Dave pretends not to enjoy) up in HR, the one who is always telling Killian that he’s THISCLOSE to harrassment claims. 

“Right. Sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in on your quiet time, I was just -.”

“Just shut the window and come sit with me before someone notices I’m missing,” is all she says, her head turning away from him to stare at a group of drunken revellers singing a very out of tune “Auld Lang Syne” as they stumble up the snow-covered street. He tries very hard not to look to much into the fact that she has clearly been expecting him, if she didn’t shut the damn window herself. 

He does as he’s told, quickly nicking a warm-looking fleece blanket from the table beside the window as he does, leaving the window cracked as he tries very hard to make clambering through the window look something other than awkward and foolish. If the way she bites back a snort when he knocks his head against the pane, muttering curses to himself in annoyance is anything to go by, he fails spectacularly, but then he is sliding onto the bench beside her, their bodies pressed in close together to fit onto the tiny seat - she tilts her head at him, her smile catching in a dimple that would bring any man to his knees, and leans down to grab at the six-pack tucked under her feet. 

“Not a kiss-at-midnight-in-front-of-all-your-friends-and-family type, then?” he asks, ignoring the way she gives him a very careful ‘cool it, buddy’ staredown as she hands him off one of her beer bottles. 

“Maybe I was just waiting for someone to show up that I wanted to kiss,” she tells him, and he swallows heavily. This would usually be the time he pulls out the charm and the eyebrows and an overabundance of sass, but he can’t quite manage it with those eyes holding him captive, so instead he shoots her the most sincere smile he can muster and holds up his bottle to cheers her. 

“Well, I hope I don’t ruin your chances of meeting him.”

Her smile curls wide, and she rolls her eyes. “Emma,” she tells him. “Emma Swan.”

It doesn’t take him long to feel the full effect of downing four ounces of whiskey in the span of three seconds - his body feels warm despite the cold settling in around them, and his smiles feel bolder as they talk - when he throws the blanket over both of their legs his fingers linger on her thigh, and she has to fight back a grin at the way he leans more firmly into her with every passing moment, but she doesn’t seem to mind any of it - she presses closer to him on a sudden burst of wind, and bumps his shoulder in amusement at some joke he tells her, her body lingering there instead of bouncing back away. He wonders if she feels it too, this pull he’s felt since he saw her across the room, the eagerness to _know_ her in whatever way she allowed, the strong feeling that he was meant to meet her, to meet her this night at the start of new beginnings.

“I have a confession,” she tells him after a lull in conversation, as they watch another group meander up the street below them. 

“Mmm?” He’s on his second beer, his hand curled loosely around her own under the blankets - he’d nearly wet himself in excitement when she’d grabbed for his hand, and though he’d covered it up quite nicely, if he does say so himself, she’d still smiled in knowing amusement.

“We’ve met, before,” she tells him, and he snorts. 

“Not bloody likely. I’d have remembered a woman as beautiful as you.”

She’s not a woman easily charmed by compliments, but she hasn’t protested a single one of them yet tonight, and he quite enjoys her lack of false modesty - she takes his words in stride and moves on and he is so impossibly smitten by her.

“You don’t remember much of the office Halloween party, do you?” she asks him, and he flushes. That had been a particularly awful night - Milah had shown up on the arm of her husband, and Killian had locked himself in the storage closet with a handle of rum. He vaguely remembers David finding him there and dragging his drunk arse down to the lobby, where a woman in what he’d at the time imagined to be a pigeon costume was waiting for him, eyes rolling behind a white feathered mask. He’d ranted for the forty minutes it had taken her to find his apartment with his drunken directions, and she’d listened quietly, and now he realizes the woman in the yellow bug, with her white satin skirts covered in glittering gems and feathers, had been a _swan_.

“Oh god,” he says, remembering the way she’d wrapped her arms around his back, taking his keys as he fumbled with them at the door, the horrifying moment he’d twirled a lock of hair between his fingers and _smelled it_ (and then commented on it, like the absolute creep and a half he was), the way she’d lowered him to his couch and flitted around for a few minutes getting him a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin. 

He’d convinced himself by morning that she was an elaborate vision he’d made up in order to forget some of the horrid anger he’d felt at seeing Gold’s smug look across the office.

“You were cute, really,” she tells him, bumping his shoulder again.

“I was a train wreck.”

“Well, yeah, but, like, an adorable puppy train wreck. You apologized for interrupting my night like twelves times. And you kept telling me I was an angel sent from heaven to save you from murdering someone you kept calling the ‘crocodile’.”

Killian groans. “I suppose there’s not a chance I didn’t actually smell your hair and remark on it’s likeness to silk, then?”

She smiles, her shoulders bobbing back and forth as she tilts her head down to look at her lap. Beneath the blankets, her fingers curl more firmly around his. “Nope. You definitely did that.”

“Right, I’ll just fly into the sun now.”

Emma graces him with a full on smile, teeth glimmering against the glowing night. “If I thought you were creepy, do you really think I’d have gotten you out here away from the crowds tonight?”

“Ah, so you _will_ admit to that.”

“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t a bore without a handle of crappy rum running through your veins.”

He smiles bright and wide in response, doing a very poor job of ignoring the way his heart soars at the thought of her having been thinking of him for _months_ now. God, he wished he remembered more of that night.

“And what is your verdict, Savior of the Drunken Idiot?”

Her head tilts against his shoulder, her fingers squeezing gently around his own, and he can feel the apples of her cheek curl up against his shoulder. 

“You’re not half bad,” she tells him, and he closes his eyes as his forehead drops to the crown of her hair. 

\------

They wake to the sound of yelling in the streets, and a raucous inside the apartment - on the television blaring inside they can hear the final chords of “Auld Lang Syne” playing again, and Killian laughs when Emma startles into wakefulness and drops the bottle in her hands - the thing rolls to the edge of the fire escape and then over - clattering almost silently into at pile of snow three floors down.

“Whassit?” she asks, blinking sleepily at him, and his grin widens. 

“Happy New Year, love,” he says, and she frowns, the furrow in her brow deep and concerned. 

“We missed the kissing part,” she tells him, and his laughter tumbles across the night as he takes in the sight of her, her hat askew and her frown morphing quickly into a tired pout - she’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to him. 

“I believe we can remedy that, if you’d like.”

Her eyes glint as she darts her gaze down to his lips, and Killian swallows heavily a moment before she surges forward - just a slow press, at first, their lips barely touching, but then the hand still tucked beneath the blanket slides up along his arm and over his chest before curling around his neck, tugging him closer - he groans when she flicks her tongue out against his lips, and the bloody vixen takes full advantage, her kiss turning warm and hot and wet as he swings his own arm around her to tug her closer.

It lasts a lifetime, and then again no time at all - he’s pulling her in for more kisses when the window behind them screeches open and the noise from the party gets louder.

“Emma! Come ooon, you’ve been out here seducing him for long enough, come inside and have some of that super expensive champagne Regina brought!”

Emma doesn’t even bother to look embarrassed as she smiles up at him, reluctantly unfurling herself from his arms as David’s wife (the couple from earlier, he finally realizes, David and Mary Margaret, and damned if they hadn’t been in on this the whole time) waves them inside. He smiles at Mary Margaret dazedly as she grins at him, tapping her foot impatiently as the two of them climb back through the window like scorned teenagers - his apology to the other woman dies on his lips as Emma tugs at the sleeve of his shirt, dragging him after her with a saucy grin and a whole lot of promises in her eyes Killian intends on holding her to her word on. 

They drink their glass of champagne and grin at each other like fools when half the party catches them snogging in the kitchen again, and when Emma finally presses a kiss to David and Mary Margaret’s cheeks and drags him out the apartment door behind her, Killian just grins at his coworker in amusement while David yells back at him “That’s my sister, Jones, so I better not hear about you flirting at the office any more!” “Only with you, Dave, I promise!”.

\------

The next year they manage to stay awake for the midnight countdown - what they can’t wait for is the actual <i>end</i> to the damn thing (who the bloody hell starts at thirty, anyway?) - and they ignore a long chorus of annoyed groans as they kiss straight through ten and into the new year. 

She hums an out of tune Auld Lang Syne against his ear as he presses a kiss to her forehead, and Killian spares a moment to thank Queen and country for tossing him in that storage closet with far too much rum for any one man. (She tells him he’s adorable and despite the crinkle of his nose as he glares at her, he believes her.)


End file.
